An African place in China?

Kelly Si Miao Liang

German Institute of Global and Area Studies, SPP Project: West African Traders as
Translators between Chinese and African Urban Modernities
Contact: kelly.liang@giga-hamburg.de

Imagine that youre in Guangzhou, a mega-metropolis of 9 million strong inhabitants. After

hearing that there is a part of the city that doesnt feel like China at all, but a mini-United
Nations or little Africa, you decide to explore this neighbourhood in person. After coming
out of the metro station, you immediately notice modern high-rises with advertisements in
English, French and Chinese languages. There are many non-Chinese pedestrians, some dressed
in colourful traditional African clothing. Welcome to Xiaobei, a news article on the Global
Times writes, welcome to the home of Chinas largest African enclave and a microcosm for
the billion dollar trade boom taking place between African nations and China (Cottrell 2008).
After getting used to the high concentration of African passersby, you take a turn and
walk through a tunnel underneath an elevated railway crossing. At the end of the tunnel lies a
square roughly the size of one third of a soccer field, packed of people, tricycles and mini-vans.
Enclosing the square are hotels, trading malls, retail stores, restaurants, and modest looking
low-rise residential buildings. The spatial constellations suggest that this square could be a
village centre in 1980s China, though the very salient African presence adds another dimension
to this small place.
This square is known locally and internationally as the start of African Street. Before the
arrival of the Africans, it was the centre of a typical decaying village which got submerged into
Guangzhous city proper by rapid urbanisation. Developments paving the way for the Africabound trade sector started around 2002 in the area. But the square did not pick up until 2006,
when some Chinese investors put in considerable capital into areas adjacent to the square.
Bankrupted hotels were renovated to welcome more travellers from Africa; shabby buildings
were converted to trading centres with shop spaces adequate for wholesaling and retailing;
residential buildings facing the streets welcomed entrepreneurs to set up restaurants and bars
on their ground floors to cater to the foreign population.
As a result, more and more shops have mushroomed with shelves full of goods appealing
particularly to African tastes and needs. In these shops, an African trader can easily find products ranging from heavy industrial machineries, to affordable consumers electronics, to wax
and artificial hair, to plus-size garments, to suits and shoes in bright colours and bold designs, to
diapers and toilet rolls. The trader can either place an order to be manufactured, buy from stock,
or purchase for individual consumption. For shipment, the trader can easily arrange cargo and
flights simply by walking across the square to the side streets full of shops specialising on
logistics and transportation and bargain their way through.
Unlike all other major trading hubs in Guangzhou, which start the day around 8AM and end
at 6PM, the square and the business sites around it deliberately operate on what some referred
to as African timeopening around 1PM and closing around 11PM. This convenient layout of
the square has in turn attracted more travelling traders not only from all parts of sub-Saharan

Space and the production of order and disorder

Africa but also from the Middle East and South Asia. Over time this little square has been
reordered to cover almost every daily need of African traders. Yet, these needs are fulfilled not
primarily by fellow Africans but rather by various groups of Chinese actors who are migrants
themselves from all over China.
In the morning, unlicensed Chinese money changers congregate in the square to communicate the latest rates and tips. Many of them disappear after a while into their territories
of responsibility; roaming around trying to ask every foreign looking person if they need to
change money or telephone card. Then street sellers of small electronics, food, toys, T-shirts
and even barbers file in to their usual space waiting for their African customers. Slowly, mini-van
drivers and trolley-pushers also arrive, getting ready to approach African traders to transport
their goods. Around noontime, African traders start to emerge, some from hotels and others
from the residential buildings. They wander down the streets to meet their Chinese and African
agents in the square, or just to commute to trading centres around the square, or to pick up one
of the mini-vans to bring them to wholesale centres and factories in other areas in Guangzhou
metropolis. If they are hungry, they may pick up some boiled corn and cut watermelon from the
stands by petty Chinese sellers in the square on the way to their business.
In the late afternoon, restaurants and street vendors start to prepare for barbecued fish,
chicken and lamb. The smell of spices and burnt grease quickly fills the air. After 6PM, the end
of the working day for most policemen, a new set of Chinese street vendors file in, setting up
their roadside eateries and cloths stands for African traders who are back after a day of serious
buying. As it gets darker, more and more African traders arrive in the square. You may find
them browsing through womens and childrens garments trying to find some souvenirs for
their families and friends back home, bargaining with sellers in English, French, Chinese or
just using a calculator. Others may be chatting with other fellow countrymen about todays
business, or simply sitting back enjoying food and beverages. On the side, tens of motorised
tricycles await for those who want to venture outside the neighbourhood, perhaps for fancier
food, clubbing or karaoke. Scenes like such continue way after midnight, making the square one
of the busiest night markets in Guangzhou.
Such social order goes on all year round without anyone conscious organising. The only
ordering principle of the square seems to be the organic, self-regulated logic of the market
created by the presence of African traders seeking made-in-China goods. These Africans have
created commercial and reproductive demands, and these demands are then met by various
groups of Chinese entrepreneurs. Probably, the square we have been talking about would have
remained a sad and deserted place overshadowed by a railway crossing, out-of-business hotels
and lazy residential buildings had the African traders arrived somewhere else.
The high concentration of African entrepreneurs in the neighbourhood has also attracted
scholarly attention. Published studies often refer to the neighbourhood as an African enclave
and African ethnic economy (Li 2008; Li et al. 2012). These buzzwords do to some extent
capture the significance of the African presence. Given both the visible dominance of Africans
and the usual African studies background of these scholars, such signifiers are fully understandable. Yet, they are not accurate.
To begin with, the square per se is hardly a place for all Africans in the area. During the day,
the square may be used by many Africans regardless of religion and ethnicity as a crossing
point, a meeting point, or a place to grab quick bites and exchange small amounts of money.
However, the Africans who frequent the square at night are mostly Christian West and Central
Africans. Muslim Africans usually refrain from going to this immoral space where alcohol
consumption and intimate interactions with opposite sex are common.
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An African place in China?

More importantly, calling the square an African place implies that it is dominated by Africans with regards to its usage, ordering and spatial significations. Africans may regard this
place as their territory and feel at home there. But this is only part of the story, and I would say
the smaller part. This square cannot function without the Chinese shopkeepers, street vendors,
money changers, all other kinds of service providers. And despite of the high visibility and
concentration of African actors in the place, they are nevertheless a minority.
In the early 2000s, African traders have played instrumental roles in promoting the spatial
reordering of the square by buying goods according to their own preferences and setting up
joint-ventures to provide food and venues appealing to the tastes of fellow Africans.
However, subsequent waves of Chinese, with different social backgrounds and skills, have
pursued copycat businesses replacing earlier developments. Some of them even created their
own niche, which in turn made the square the bustling multicultural economic place as seen
today. In fact, all the different economic activities, which are spread out during day and night,
licensed or not, legal or illegal, and how they negotiate, order and signify the physical space are
fundamentally Chinese. Thus, even though the place may look African at first sight, though it
may bear African significations for many African actors, and though its economy may be driven
by African demands, the decisive ordering power nevertheless lies in the hands of the multitude of Chinese actors, ranging from the individual migrant peddler to government authorities. African traders by their presence have created stimulants for socioeconomic and spatial
reordering processes, which are based on the existing power relations within this place and the
wider Chinese urban socio-economic and political environment.
Its worth mentioning that spatial ordering is not the core interest within our research project.
Hence this vignette is rather a by-product of our efforts to establish an integrated understanding
of our field sites by systematically taking into account both the African and Chinese perspectives. Without combining African studies and China studies expertise, a researcher can easily
get overly intrigued by the ostensible African-ness of the square. He or she therefore might
run into the risk of seeing the place as purely African and reducing the complex social realities
of Africans in China to handy catchwords such as the African enclave, African trading post.
What he or she will miss out is the organic joint place-making and mutual adaptations by both
the African and Chinese actors.

References:
Cottrell, Christopher, 2008. Guangzhous Little Africa. In: Macau Daily, January 29.
www.foreignercn.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=244:guangzhous-littleafrica&catid=40:foreigners-in-china&Itemid=70.
Li, Zhang. 2008. Ethnic Congregation in a Globalizating City: The Case of Guangzhou, China. In: Cities
25, 383395.
LLi, Zhigang, Michal Lyons, and Alison Brown. 2012. Chinas Chocolate City: An Ethnic Enclave in a
Changing Landscape. In: African Diaspora 5(1), 5172. doi:10.1163/187254612X649465

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